Paper Short Abstract:

We conduct community-based research in an island of Reposaari, just outside Pori, Finland. In our work, we do not so much work to involve local people, but as researchers, our role is to participate in recording, writing or otherwise making known the history of local communities.

Paper Abstract:

We are interested in the history of the local people of Reposaari and the community itself. We are also interested in what kinds of interpretations of the past are considered meaningful by the community and how people understand their past and present, or how they construct their own community identity. We are also interested in how a community's own history can be made accessible, or how interaction between researchers and experts in their own history takes place. We have been doing community-based research with islanders since 2011.

As an example, we use the rock carvings on the Takaranta in Reposaari, which have been carried out on the cliffs from the 1850s to the present day. The rock carvings serve as places of remembrance and commemoration. They help locals to remember and commemorate islanders and their lives who have passed away.

In our experience, interaction with locals produces information that brings to light things that we as researchers might not otherwise have been able to conceptualise. Indeed, the knowledge produced by community-based research has been partly beyond the reach of researchers, because it is local and often experiential, and is rooted in everyday life.